John Woo gets new “Face/Off” release

When scriptwriters Mike Werb and Michael Colleary wrote the script for “Face/Off,” the idea was that it would be set in a distant future where the technology needed to swap faces would be an everyday occurrence. It was still an action picture, and their hope was that the famed Chinese action director John Woo would direct.

However, even though he liked the script, Woo turned down the project because he didn’t understand science fiction. So a few years later, after the script moved from Warner Bros. to Paramount, the suggestion that they could not only save $15 million in production costs but also get Woo to helm it was to move it to present day.

This is information that you find out in the new extras for “Face/Off,” which gets the two-disc treatment for its tenth anniversary re-release on DVD. Actually, the information is very well presented and worth watching for Woo fans.

The story: FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) has a personal vendetta mission against terrorist-for-hire Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage); Troy killed Archer’s son in an assassination attempt. After a big shootout, Troy is captured and in a coma. However, there’s a biological bomb about to go off in Los Angeles, and only Castor and his brother Pollux (Alessandro Nivola) know where the bomb is located.

Archer’s superiors convince him to take a great risk; a new technique that allows surgical transplantation of faces will enable him to assume the identity of his hated obsession. He can then interrogate Pollux in the maximum-security prison he’s incarcerated in, and discover the location of the bomb.

After the surgery, Archer/Troy goes to get the information out of Pollux, but then finds that Troy has now assumed his identity (and face). Now Archer/Troy is in prison, and Troy/Archer is taking on his life, including his wife Eve (Joan Allen). Now he has to bust out of the super-max and confront his greatest enemy as himself.

The dichotomy for both actors is explored in the hour-long documentary “The Light and the Dark: Making Face/Off.” Travolta and Cage talk about how they had to mimic each other; Travolta picked up on Cage’s swaggering walk, and Cage copied Travolta’s hand brushing over the back of his head. I always wondered how they kept each other’s roles straight, but it seems to have worked.

There’s a lot of focus on the minimalist style of Woo. Now, ‘minimalist’ is not a word you would normally associate with Woo’s films, which are heavy on action and things getting blown up real good. Woo says in the documentary that he likes to get things in one shot; no more than three.

The way that his films seem so expansive is explained by having lots of cameras shooting at the same time. His crew worried about the cameras moving into frame, but that doesn’t worry Woo because he knows how he’ll edit them out in the final cut.

Woo fans will also appreciate the 30-minute documentary “John Woo: A Life in Pictures,” which lets Woo tell the story of how he went from living in the streets and slums of Hong Kong to one of the action genre’s most sought-after directors. He explains why so many of his action shots seem like choreography; he was highly influenced by American musicals playing in the Hong Kong theaters, where he escaped the violence of the streets.

Other extras include two commentaries, seven deleted scenes, and an alternate ending.

I’ve not personally seen too many of Woo’s films; “Mission: Impossible 2″ and “Broken Arrow” are the only others. I don’t have an antipathy to violent films; but his films are hard to take more than once. “Broken Arrow” seemed meandering; “MI:2″ was too derivative. I enjoyed “Face/Off” the most, but it’s so spooky that it’s been ten years since I saw it. And I still remembered most of it, and found it just as spooky.

All that being said; this is a good pickup for fans of the film and director. And I may not watch it again for another ten years, but I’ll keep it.